Buzzby

Harper's War Will Have No Exit Strategy
Ian Mulgrew | Vancouver Sun | 12/06/2005

Conservative leader Stephen Harper all but promised on the weekend as he toured the Lower Mainland to cut funding to Vancouver's safe injection site experiment and repudiate the harm-reduction drug policy this city has pioneered for the last half decade.

Harper wants mandatory minimum sentences for drug offences, to eliminate conditional sentences such as house arrest, to bring in tougher fines for traffickers and producers, to scrap Liberal plans to decriminalize marijuana and to introduce a national drug strategy aimed at youth.

He would impose sentences of at least two years for trafficking heroin, cocaine, crystal meth, marijuana or hashish. And he'd up the penalties for repeat offences.

It was a performance that would have made proud Ronald Reagan, the late Republican president and father of the War on Drugs, and his ideological heir, George W. Bush.

Trouble is, 20 years after the U.S. began jailing its own citizens at a rate that outstripped even the most dictatorial countries, such an approach to drug use runs counter to the best thinking, no matter which side of the political spectrum you are on.

Drug use is not a left-or-right issue, it is a problem that transcends party lines.

Non-Partisan Association veteran and former Vancouver mayor Philip Owen, for instance, has just returned from Afghanistan enthusiastically proselytizing for an end to the criminal prohibition of marijuana and advocating a radical change in our approach -- period.

"It only makes sense," he told me.

The B.C. Medical Officers of Health have just issued a report calling for the legalization of marijuana and a wholesale change to how we approach addiction and drug issues.

The United Kingdom reclassified marijuana a year ago and recently the government's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs gave the move glowing reviews.

Despite concerns that reducing criminal penalties would increase use, the number of people using cannabis has fallen by more than one per cent.

The Dutch, who began to tolerate possession of small amounts of marijuana, and pot cafes, in the mid-1970s, have had a similar experience -- their usage rates are below that of North America and they are now debating legalizing production. Meanwhile, more police resources were re-targeted to fight hard drugs such as heroin and cocaine.

Even in the U.S., lawyers, judges, policy wonks, police officers and others were debating last week in Seattle an "exit strategy" on the war on drugs because this spare-the-rod-spoil-the-child approach isn't working.

Denver voters last month endorsed an initiative saying adults 21 years or older could possess up to one ounce of pot.

Citizens in other U.S. cities, particularly in California, have supported the same kind of voter-driven initiatives.

Downtown Oakland, for example, has been resuscitated by the arrival of medical cannabis dispensaries and private pot clubs.

States that ramped up their penalties for drug abuse have discovered the cost of prisons is draining their treasuries to such an extent they've had to embrace early release programs and other measures such as drug and community courts to keep offenders out of jail.

Time magazine this week reported that new research on the medical use of marijuana is one of the most significant medical developments of 2005:

"Research into the analgesic and anti-inflammatory effects of cannabis continued to bolster the case for the medicinal use of marijuana, making the 'patient pot laws' that have passed in 11 states seem less like a social movement than a legitimate medical trend. One trial -- the first controlled study of its kind -- showed that a medicine containing cannabis extracts called Sativex [which is already available in Canada] not only lessened the pain of rheumatoid arthritis but actually suppressed the disease. An earlier study published in the Journal of Neuroscience showed that synthetic cannabinoids, the chemicals in marijuana, can reduce inflammation in the brain and may protect it from the cognitive decline associated with Alzheimer's disease."

Even in the country that spawned the war on drugs and the just-say-no ideology, the truth is becoming more and more evident -- the war is being lost.

The current criminal prohibition against marijuana has led to a situation in which our neighbourhoods are riddled with illegal and in some cases dangerous grow operations. Billions of dollars are flowing into the pockets of organized crime.

Our children are subjected to inadequate and often inaccurate drug education. Thousands of Canadians are having their lives ruined by the stigma of a record. The flouting of the law and the lack of substance in the arguments for maintaining the law are corroding many Canadians' faith in the police and legal system. And pot remains freely available.

Every smart person or group who has looked at this issue -- from the 1970s' LeDain Royal Commission to the more recent Senate subcommittee, from the B.C. Court of Appeal to the B.C. Medical Officers of Health, from ex-mayor-new-Liberal Senator Larry Campbell to Fraser Institute economist Stephen Easton, all have concluded tougher penalties and longer jail terms do not and will not work.

In a recent poll, 57 per cent of Canadians said they wanted marijuana users left alone.

Harper, in my opinion, should rethink his stance -- Canadians do not want to go backward into the future.

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